Iraq - No Way Out - comments about KCRW's To The Point with Warren Olney
Warren Olney is the host of No Way out on Public Radio. This is an excellent program that brings together authoritive voices on both sides of many important issues, and forcing them to engage in a real debate about those issues.
I was listening to today's show, about the war in Iraq, and I had a few reactions. The various speakers talked about the best and worst possible outcomes. I think the problem is that Americans are very pessimistic about the possibility of the best outcome - a stable, democratic Iraq. We see very little to make us believe this is likely to occur. But we do worry about the worst possible outcome - civil war, insurgents running large parts of Iraq, and a breeding ground for terrorists, who would stop attacking our troops in Iraq, and start attacking the US homeland. We see no way out of this mess, and it sickens us.
Right now, we are caught in the middle. And our soldiers are targets for ongoing attacks, and their only role is suppressing the insurgency, HOPING that Iraqi troops can take their place, and HOPING that the Iraqi's can form a government. How many soldiers and their families would continue to support the war, if they were told the PLAN was for them to be sacrificed to save the homeland? In computer security, it's called a honey pot - a computer made available to hackers, to learn their methods, and to keep them busy, away from the really important computers.
Personally, I think the Democrats blew the opportunity during the last election to say "given the mess that Bush created, we have to stay the course - so we have no plan for Iraq different from Bush's - but we ought to throw out the bums who got us into this situation, and did such a bad job of planning for the post-Hussein power vacuum." Also, I see no evidence that Bush CARES that his ratings are low - since he is a lame duck, and does not even need to worry about getting is VP elected in his place. Jeb Bush may care - and other Republicans may care - but they probably believe that Karl Rove can manipulate the public again, and Republican governers can manipulate the voting enough, to win in 2008.
I was listening to today's show, about the war in Iraq, and I had a few reactions. The various speakers talked about the best and worst possible outcomes. I think the problem is that Americans are very pessimistic about the possibility of the best outcome - a stable, democratic Iraq. We see very little to make us believe this is likely to occur. But we do worry about the worst possible outcome - civil war, insurgents running large parts of Iraq, and a breeding ground for terrorists, who would stop attacking our troops in Iraq, and start attacking the US homeland. We see no way out of this mess, and it sickens us.
Right now, we are caught in the middle. And our soldiers are targets for ongoing attacks, and their only role is suppressing the insurgency, HOPING that Iraqi troops can take their place, and HOPING that the Iraqi's can form a government. How many soldiers and their families would continue to support the war, if they were told the PLAN was for them to be sacrificed to save the homeland? In computer security, it's called a honey pot - a computer made available to hackers, to learn their methods, and to keep them busy, away from the really important computers.
Personally, I think the Democrats blew the opportunity during the last election to say "given the mess that Bush created, we have to stay the course - so we have no plan for Iraq different from Bush's - but we ought to throw out the bums who got us into this situation, and did such a bad job of planning for the post-Hussein power vacuum." Also, I see no evidence that Bush CARES that his ratings are low - since he is a lame duck, and does not even need to worry about getting is VP elected in his place. Jeb Bush may care - and other Republicans may care - but they probably believe that Karl Rove can manipulate the public again, and Republican governers can manipulate the voting enough, to win in 2008.
posted by Dan at 2:31 PM
link for this entry
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home